Saturday, 10 December 2016

ISIS Kerala Cell Planned 12 Attacks: Updates

ISIS cells in Kerala planned 12 attacks

Kochi: The sleeper
cells of Islamic State in Kerala had planned to conduct 12 attacks, it
is learnt. According to sources, the accused even prepared for the
attacks by storing explosives. The National Investigation Agency
suspects that Ansar Al-Khilafah, an organisation which recently pledged
its allegiance to the ISIS, is heading the operations in Kerala. NIA
SP A.P. Shoukathali on Monday produced six persons arrested from
Kannur before the NIA Special Court.

The court, which considered the
contentions of the NIA counsel that the custody of the accused is
necessary to unearth more details, remanded them in police custody for
12 days. The cops covered the faces of the accused and later took them
to an undisclosed location for further interrogation.

According to the NIA, the arrested
persons were part of a ten-member team which planned to attack five
persons, including High Court judges, and seven institutions. The NIA
will make further arrests in the case. The arrested are Manseed alias
Omar Al Hindi alias Muthuka of Kannur, Abu Basheer alias Rashid alias
Buccha alias Dalpati alias Ameer of Coimbatore, T. Swalih Mohammed
alias Yousuf alias Abu Hasna, N.K. Jasim, Ramshad Nangeelam alias Amu
and P. Safwan. According to sources, Safwan was working in a vernacular
newspaper.

According to the NIA, they made use of ‘Telegram's
mobile application for communication. Despite reports that the state
police was in the dark about NIA's crackdown, State police chief Loknath
Behera said the present operation was a joint effort of multiple
agencies. He however preferred not to elaborate.

A top state police intelligence officer
said that they had been tracking the social media chat group titled
Ansar Al-Khilafah for quite sometime. "The group had even changed its
name to Ansar Al-Haq on suspicion of being tracked". According to
sources, pro-IS groups by the name Ansar Al-Khilafah are active in
countries such as Brazil and Philippines. "We are yet to ascertain
whether the group held in Kerala has any direct links with these
groups," said the source.

Kerala: NIA nabs 6 men for ‘links’ with Islamic State

KANNUR: The National
Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday nabbed six men from Kanakamala,
near Panoor here for allegedly having links with terrorist outfit
Islamic State (IS). One of them was nabbed from Kuttiady, Kozhikode. The
NIA team conducted a raid following a tip-off that the men were holding
a meeting in the area and took them into custody. The team led by SP
Shoukath Ali had started combing the area in the afternoon and no
information regarding the men were released. The men were taken into
custody after their WhatsApp and Telegram (app) messages were tracked by
state and Central agencies for several months.

According to sources, it was a
preemptive raid to thwart any untoward attempt by the men, all of whom
are aged below 25. All the members of the group, around 20 of them, had
not seen each other and the meeting on Sunday was an attempt to meet up
as they suspected that their messages were being leaked. The NIA team
left with the men soon after taking them into custody. There are also
unconfirmed reports that the nabbed men and their group had targeted top
police officials and judges. As the news of the arrest spread, many
people started heading to Kanakamala.

Family clueless on P Safwan’s IS links

Malappuram: The
family of P. Safwan, 30, one of the six men who were arrested by the
NIA from Kannur over their alleged links with the IS, is in the dark
about his connection with the terror outfit. His mother has denied any
suspicious move by Safwan though he was actively associated with the
Popular Front of India and its political wing Social Democratic Party
of India (SDPI). “I only came to know about his arrest after a team of
policemen visited our house (at Ponmundam) on Sunday. They searched his
belongings and found nothing. The incident has shocked us and I believe
this is fate. Nothing more to say,” she said.

Safwan is a designer in Thejas daily in
Kozhikode. “He usually comes back home after work and had informed us
that he was going for a sightseeing trip on Sunday with friends,” the
mother said. A few PFI workers were also present at his home on Monday
and they refused to divulge more about his background and asked the
mediapersons to leave the place. “He is active in all community
affairs and I have found nothing wrong in him,” Abdurahman, who runs a
shop near Safwan’s home, said. Most of the local residents preferred to
keep mum about Safwan.

But one of his relatives, on condition
of anonymity, said that he might have had extreme line of thinking
since he was part of PFI activities. Safwan is also active on the
social media. According to Kottakkal police, Safwan is the 11th accused
in the police station attack case of 2007. Around 130 activists of NDF,
the predecessor of PFI, had ransacked the Kottakkal police station on
March 21 that year seeking to release a fellow activist who was
arrested in connection with a murder case.

'ISIS sympathiser loving, kind-hearted'

Chennai: Satya Street in a sleepy
lower-middle-class neighbourhood in Kottivakkam is where Swalih
Mohammed, one of several alleged ISIS sympathisers arrested by NIA
sleuths, was living with his wife and son since last June.

Swalih, as known to his wife, was a peace-loving man whose love for
her and their son is immense and the woman is yet to recover from the
trauma of NIA sleuths coming knocking on her doors when she was
expecting Swalih.

Jensina, who got married to Swalih after they fell in love while
working in a BPO in the IT Corridor four years ago, took exception to
the accusations made by the NIA sleuths.
The sleuths who searched her residence confiscated her mobile phone
and some documents, which they said would help their case against Swalih
to whom the NIA gave the aliases Yousuf and Abu Hasna. Swalih is how
his friends and neighbours, including the landlord, knew him.

A friend and roomie of Swalih knew him as a pious person who would
not miss prayers. The landlord Dhanasekaran struggled to identify his
tenant when the cops flashed a picture of Swalih, in a clean shaven
face, as opposed to the bearded face which the latter would always
sport.

"Swalih wanted Rs 30,000 advance to be returned immediately earlier
in September so that he could relocate to Kerala, but I made it clear
that he had to wait until November to get the money,” Dhanasekaran told
the media. Swalih, a class XII pass, is proficient in using computers. He would
leave for work at 8.30 am and return at 11 pm and he claimed to be part
of a private exotic resort club in a mall in Royapettah.

Group was in touch on WhatsApp

The six people arrested by NIA for alleged links with IS had never
met each other, but were in touch through WhatsApp and had exchanged
chats regularly.
NIA sources said Manseed alias Omar is suspected to be the head of
the module and was the administrator of the WhatsApp group and he in
fact communicated to them about the meeting through a chat.

All the six, who were in different places, had reached Kannur on October 1 for the meeting and were picked up on October 2.

ISIS threat to Kerala politicians, HC judges, say intel agencies

Kochi: Intelligence agencies in Kerala have alerted
the state government about threat from ISIS-linked module to two high
court judges and some politicians, close on the heels of NIA arresting
six persons of the terror module from the state.
A report in this regard has been submitted by ADGP Intelligence to
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who also holds the Home portfolio,
police sources said.
The sources, however, declined to divulge further details.

NIA teams along with Kerala Police, Delhi police and Telangana police
had launched surveillance on the movements of the accused involved in
the conspiracy and during searches, the six were arrested from Kozhikode
and Kannur districts.
Five of them were arrested while they were conducting a meeting at
Kanakamala hilltop in Kannur and another person was arrested from
Kuttiyadi in Kozhikode, a NIA release had stated.

IS links: Kerala police gave Kanakamala lead 3 months ago

KOZHIKODE: The state
police gave the first lead on the secretive gatherings of IS-inspired
radicalised youths at Kanakamala in Kannur district three months ago,
according to sources. They chose the hillock, situated near
Peringathur, 16 km from Thalassery, as it is a popular picnic spot.
Acting on the report, the National Investigation Agency busted the
module by arresting five persons on Sunday from Kanakamala and one from
Kuttiadi in Kozhikode district. According to the NIA, the members of the
module were planning to target two judges of the Kerala High Court, two
leaders of Sangh Parivar and one police official.

Though the public were suspicious about
the visits of the youngsters to the spot, it was the tracking of some
fake IDs on the Facebook and later in the chat group in Telegram by
police that shed light on the activities of the youths. For more than
six months, the police had been tracking the online discussion forums
in Malayalam. The cyber sleuths had opened and operated many fake IDs
to infiltrate into the forums.

An official told DC that such forums
were used by ultra outfits to identify and recruit cadres from the
grassroots. “We feel it is the third or fourth layer of IS modules,” he
said and added that those with direct IS links would be at the top
layer. “In each layer, there would be one or two with links to the
higher layer and those picked up from the lower layers would be elevated
to the higher,” he pointed out.

The online crusaders used the fake FB
IDs ‘akbar k puram,’ ‘sameer ali’ and ‘al muhagiroon.’ Several blogs
were also launched by the propagators to charm youngsters first into
the Islamic way of Salafi living and then to the IS path. These IDs and
those who operated them were under watch for some time. The reports on
the importance of Kanakamala as a rendezvous and the discussion forums
on the social networking sites were submitted to the DGP and later
passed on to the NIA.

Since then, the NIA officials have been
tracking the online activities as well as offline movements of many of
the youths involved. The sleuths also tracked a website
‘aloloommalayalam.com’ founded by a group of Muslim youngsters from the
state who pursued Islamic studies in Yemen, sources said. The Dar
al-Hadith Institute is a Salafi school of Islamic studies in Yemen which
attracted hundreds of Muslim youths from India seeking a pure form of
Islam.

Malayalam Facebook account ‘Sameer Ali’ is active

KOZHIKODE: The
Malayalam Facebook account with the ID ‘Sameer Ali,’ which was one among
the IDs used as a communication platform for youngsters to discuss the
Salafi way of life, Islamic faith and other issues, including Islamic
State, was active on Tuesday even after the arrest of six persons by the
NIA on Sunday. It is believed that some of the arrested were operating
the FB account. Those communicating on the wall of ‘Sameer Ali’
expressed their doubts on the current status of the ID, saying the NIA
was operating it to identify the pro-IS youngsters.

Some patriots even protested on the wall
and one person also wrote a letter to the chief minister seeking
immediate action. However, police sources confirmed that the ID has
multiple operators from various countries. The sleuths believe that the
ID was operated by persons from Afghanistan and Syria at different
points of time. Such operators now opt out of Gulf countries as
suspicious groups are under close watch by investigation agencies. The
FB post continued as a communication platform posting many messages.

In a message posted for the followers of
the group in the morning on the arrest of the youngsters, ‘Sameer Ali’
said Jihad does not depend on any person. “It is a changeless entity.
Those engaged in Jihad may be killed, critically injured, left bedridden
or imprisoned. More and more persons will come and join the Jihad which
would be on in a better way,” Sameer Ali said in the post. “They
have finished their mission. Dedicated their honesty and commitment to
Islam,” the post said.

Islamic State module busted by NIA cites Zakir Naik as 'source of inspiration'

NEW DELHI: Manseed alias Omar al-Hindi, the chief of terror group
Islamic State module busted by the NIA+
on Sunday, had worked for 12 years as part of the intelligence wing of
Popular Front India (PFI), reporting on activities of RSS and its
functionaries in Kerala.

The module headed by him was plotting Nice-like attacks on community
events, particularly an all-religion gathering in Kochi, and had even
been transferred Rs 38,000 from abroad through Western Union to buy a second-hand heavy vehicle to be driven into the crowd, killing and maiming a large number of people, sources said. A link with controversial cleric
Zakir Naik+
has also surfaced with all six members of the al-Hindi module speaking of the televangelist as a
source of inspiration+
, saying they were motivated by his speeches and social media posts.

Al-Hindi's association with PFI ended after the organisation expelled
him for marrying a woman from the Philippines, he revealed to his
interrogators. The 30-year-old relocated from Kerala to Qatar around
eight years ago and was working as a sales executive in Doha.
Around 12-18 months ago, he started following online jihadi activity
and would surf the internet for pro-IS blogs and posts. While
interacting with jihad-minded people on social media, he encountered his
Afghanistan-based handler Abu Aysha, who helped him put together a Facebook group called 'Ansar-ul-Khilaaf' comprising IS-leaning youth from Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The group communicated using telegram and Tutanota encryption and
would keep changing names to avoid detection. Abu Aysha would regularly
send material against RSS and motivate the group to target Sangh
workers.

The module's plans included targetting three top RSS members of
Kerala, two Kerala high court judges with "progressive views on Sharia
law", rationalists and activists of the Muslim community and Jews based
in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu. The group also planned to procure arms and
materials for explosives to execute their terror plans.
The accused revealed that four members of the module travelled to
Kodaikanal on September 12 to conduct a recee for a possible attack on
Jews there. But they met with an accident en route and aborted the plan
and then scheduled the attack for the first week of October.

The NIA, while scanning electronic devices seized from the accused,
found material, including details on procuring material for explosives,
making explosives from fireworks powder and bomb-making manuals.

Abu Aysha, intelligence sources said, told al-Hindi that he had met
some of the 21 Keralites who left India to join IS as they transited
through Tehran in July. He claimed all 21 were now based in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

The module led by al-Hindi was being tracked by intelligence agencies
for almost four to five months. In fact, the accused came on the radar
while the NIA was tracking some youths discussing travelling to Turkey
for onward journey to Iraq-Syria. As their plan to leave India to join
the IS became apparent, the agencies intervened and alerted their
parents. Finally, the youths were dissuaded from travelling abroad.

ISIS links: 3 arrested in Coimbatore

Coimbatore: Three youths with suspected links to
ISIS were picked up by the National Investigation Agency on Wednesday
and are being questioned about their alleged association with another
suspect arrested from Kannur in Kerala.

The NIA had already questioned 13 youths, residing in and around GM
Nagar in South Ukkadam in the city during the last 10 days on their
reported links with Abu Basheer, one of the six arrested from Kannur
earlier this month for being part of an ISIS-inspired module that
allegedly conspired to carry out terror attacks.

Their names were in the Facebook and telephone contact list of
Basheer. Laptops, mobile phones and some electronic gadgets were also
seized from them.
On Sunday, ISIS operative Subhani Haji Moideen who was arrested from
Kadayanallur in Tirunelveli was taken to his native village in
Thodupuzha in Kerala to collect evidence. His family came to know about
his links with ISIS only after he was arrested.

Row in Popular Front of India over ouster of P Safwan on Islamic State link

KOZHIKODE: Cracks
have appeared in the Popular Front of India (PFI) over the ouster of its
active member P. Safwan, 30, after his arrest over IS links on October
2. The NIA arrested Mr Safwan along with four others during their secret
meeting at Kanakamala near Panur. Immediately after the arrest, they
fired him as the graphic designer of its Thejas newspaper. Sources said
the knee-jerk reaction had triggered simmering of grumblings which were
there for quite some time.

“Mr Safwan’s arrest was solely based on
the claims of NIA. If that is the case, then we could not suspect the
umpteen Muslim youth put in various jails on cooked up charges,” said a
district-level leader, who requested anonymity. The hardcore group led
by Prof P. Koya abides by the core principal of the Muslim cause. Its
proponents are against leaning towards democracy and functioning more
like a political party.

The rival group argues for a more
democratic approach to shed its fundamentalist image it got after
chopping off Prof Joseph's hand. Leaders owing allegiance to the
hardcore group had visited the house of Mr Safwan offering legal
assistance. They remind it was the PFI that unleashed a statewide
campaign on the brutal killing of Muslim Youth League worker Shukkur in
Kannur allegedly by CPM workers after a ‘party trial’. “We defended
innocent Muslims’ cases irrespective of their other identities,” said a
leader.

The rattled supporters are venting their
ire on the soft line via social media under fake identities. But PFI
state president C. Abdul Hameed said the rift was a social media
creation. “There is no differences in the organisation. We fired him
under our policy,” he told DC. Mr Safwan was a defendant in the case of
Kottakkal police station attack in 2007 demanding the release of NDF
(the PFI’s previous avatar) leaders.

New Delhi:Four more persons with alleged links to Mideast
terror group ISIS have been arrested by the National Investigation
Agency (NIA) over a plot to carry out terror attacks in the country. The
agency had earlier detained six other persons from Kerala over the
plot.

Thodupuzha native Subahani was held from Tirunelveli and three others
were arrested from Coimbatore on Monday. The agency got wind of the
plot while probing the disappearance of 21 people from Kerala who are
believed to have joined the Islamic State (ISIS).

The organization that coordinated with the Kerala ISIS unit is named
Ansar-ul Khilafah. Half of its members are abroad. Onmanorama had in
July reported about a group with the same name that posted a death threat
against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin on their Facebook page. The
page was deactivated as soon as the media started publishing reports
about it. Many posts on the deactivated FB page were against the secular
Indian state and democracy. Kerala cops had apparently not acted on
that info despite the media reports at that time.

Reports suggest that the IS module was allegedly plotting to kill
four prominent people in Kerala and had also planned to drive a truck
into the Jamaat-e-Islaami convention in Kochi last month. But timely
intelligence on the latter attack helped prevent it.
NIA was assisted by police personnel from Kerala, Delhi and Telangana during the operations.

Kochi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has revealed that the
Keralite youths, who were arrested for their alleged links with terror
outfit Islamic State, had communicated with one another using a
sophisticated encrypted email app - Tutanota.

Unlike other mail services, the messages sent from this app do not get
saved on the server. The messages can be accessed only in the devices
that were used to send and receive them and not even the service
providers can access them. Once deleted, it is not possible to retrieve
the information from the phone or computer, reports said.

It has been found that the messages were sent from fake SIM cards
procured by Manseed, who was among the six Keralites arrested earlier
this month for their links with the international terror outfit. The NIA
has also retrieved a tablet computer used by Manseed's wife.

Coimbatore: Two more youths from the city have been picked up for
questioning by the NIA to probe their alleged association with a
suspected ISIS operative, arrested a few days ago in neighboring Kerala,
police said on Sunday.
NIA officials questioned them in the police commissioner's office, they said, adding that the two hail from Ukkadam here.

Based on inputs received from Abu Basheer, a suspected IS operative, NIA
has so far questioned 15 persons from the city, who were later let off.

Inspired by 'online bin Laden', Kannur youths flocked to ISIS

Saturday 15 October 2016 04:22 PM IST
Kochi: The Keralite youths, who were arrested for their alleged links
with ISIS, confessed to the NIA that they were inspired by the lectures
of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the spokesman of al-Qaeda and was also
known as 'online bin Laden'.
The youths revealed about al-Awlaki's lectures during an interrogation by the NIA.

The NIA suspects that the youths had shared parts of al-Awlaki’s
speeches through chat application Telegram. Meanwhile, the NIA has
approached the court to get permission to retrieve messages from the
phone of Rashid, who was among the youths arrested from Kannur.

In normal circumstances, when a phone is seized the SIM card and
battery are removed. The data can be checked without switching on the
phone.

However, the phone has to be switched on and a one-time password (OTP)
generated to make a chat application like Telegram function. The NIA has
filed a writ petition in the court for getting permission to do this.

P. Safwan

Among the arrested, P Safwan, 30, was a graphic designer with Malayalam
daily Thejas, the mouthpiece of right-wing Muslim outfit Popular Front
of India (PFI).

Manseed bin Mohamed

NIA sources said Manseed, 30, who hails from Panur, where the meeting
was held, was known as the group’s leader. Manseed, who worked as an
office assistant in Qatar, came home on leave on Friday and reportedly
organised Sunday’s meeting.

“Manseed came from a lower-middle class family and had led a quiet
life in his village. His father is a hotel employee in Bengaluru. He
went to West Asia some five years ago and had never shown any political
affiliation…we are all shocked,’’ said a local leader, P Hareendran.

Two other suspects — Jassim N K and Ramshad N K — hail from Kuttiadi
in Kozhikode and are cousins. An engineering dropout from Cochin
University of Science and Technology, Jassim subsequently went to
Bengaluru and reportedly attended multiple coaching classes to take
different examinations. NIA officials said he reached home Saturday
morning to attend the meeting.
Ramshad, a BCom graduate, is engaged in odd jobs at Kuttiadi. He
hadn’t taken part in the “secret meeting” and was arrested from his home
based on information gathered from the others.

The fifth person, Swalih Muhammed has been settled in Chennai for several years and worked with a private firm, said NIA sources. He hails from Chelakkara in Thrissur district, where residents
said Swalih had left after Class XII and frequently visited his family
in Kerala.

The sixth accused, Abu Basheer, is from Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

Kerala ISIS kingpin was NIT passout

KOZHIKODE: Shajeer
Managalasseri Abdulla, the suspected kingpin of the Islamic State (IS)
module in Kerala, is a graduate from National Institute of
Technology-Calicut (NITC). An expert in information technology, he
completed BTech in civil engineering in 2002 and left for UAE in 2004
after he landed a job there.

His first passport was issued in September, 2004 from the passport office in Kozhikode, which was renewed in November, 2014.

Hailing
from a middleclass family, Shajeer was a brilliant student, said his
relatives and neighbours.Born to Mangalassery Abdulla and Subaida in
1981, Shajeer has two sisters and one brother, who is a driver with a
leading jewellery in Kozhikode. His father passed away ten years ago.
"He went to school at Sulthan Batheri in Wayanad where his father was a
driver with the KSRTC. His family shifted to Moozhikkal near Kozhikode
after he got admission at the NITC," said one of his relatives.

The
family is yet to recover from the shock after learning that Shajeer has
joined the terror organization. The kin were apprised of the
developments when police visited their house at Moozhikkal three days
ago.

"We are clueless regarding what had happened to him and we
don't know what the Islamic State is," said his brother and sister over
phone. "We survive with the money Shajeer regularly sends home. He is a
loner, who kept aloof from everything," they said.

Neighbours too
said Shajeer was an introvert who doesn't mingle with anyone. "I
remember seeing him once two years ago when he came home on leave. I
don't remember talking to him though his house is just two hundred
metres away from mine," said a neighbour.

The
National Investigation Agency (NIA) that has been probing the
IS-related cases believes that Shajeer is the amir (leader) of the
Kerala module that was busted at Kanakamala recently and he has close
links with the leadership of the terror outfit in Afghanistan. Holed up
in the IS stronghold in Afghanistan, he was in touch with them through
Telegram app and was regularly posting Malayalam propaganda material on
Facebook via an account with profile name Sameer Ali.

Shajeer
was a supporter of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the
political wing of the Popular Party of India (PFI) before joining the
IS. He was active in the Facebook group `SDPI Keralam' formed by the
party cadres and sympathisers. However, he was never spotted at any
events organized by the party.

It
is not clear as to when Shajeer was drawn to the IS. Sources said that
he was unhappy with the the political party as it was widely believed to
have diluted the organization's ideology.

There
were discussions in the Facebook group over the perceived change in the
agenda of the organization. It is assumed that Shajeer got attracted to
the IS ideology after he was disillusioned with the democratic path
chosen by the PFI.

Kasargod man held in UAE for aiding Islamic State module

Kochi: A Keralite who
allegedly sent funds to the Islamic State (IS) South India module, that
was busted at Kanakamala in Kannur last year, was intercepted and
detained by the UAE police based on the information given by the
National Investigative Agency sleuths. Moideen, 48, a native of
Kasargod, was arraigned as 13th accused in the case. “His involvement
was revealed while examining the funds received by the group. Moideen
was frequently sending money to the group to commence its operations in
Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We had passed on the information about Moideen to
the police agencies in the UAE. The police there have informed us that
he was detained there,” an NIA official said.

The NIA has started the process to
extradite him. "We expect the process to get over in a few weeks,” he
said. In October last, the NIA sleuths, while acting on inputs by
various intelligence agencies, had busted the IS group while its members
were holding a secret meeting at Kanakamala in Kannur. During its
probe, the NIA had found that the group was planning to attack religious
places and locations frequented by Israeli tourists.

Kerala youth arrested for Islamic State links

New Delhi, Feb 16: The National Investigation Agency has arrested Mouinudheen Parakadavath, a resident of Kasargod in Kerala for his alleged links with an Islamic State module. He was arrested by NIA officials at Delhi as he landed from Abu Dhabi.
The
case relates to a terror module in which a group of youths from Kerala
including some members based in the Middle-East, hatched a conspiracy as
per the instructions from their online IS handlers.

Based on their revelation, it was established that Mouinudheen was a
key figure in the module, which was actively planning various aspects of
terrorist plot, on a Telegram group. Mouinudheen was using the online identity Abu-Al-Indonesi as well as Ibn Abdullah, on the group.
It
was also revealed by the arrested persons that Mouinudheen had sent
funds from Abu Dhabi to members of the terrorist module in Kerala, for
the purpose of the conspiracy, through Western Union Money Transfer last
year.